'I'm glad I wasn't young when I found fame... I'd have waltzed off with Abi Titmuss,'

Friday 22 August 2008 21:06 BST

Len Goodman is pulling his 'Carol Vorderman on Strictly Come Dancing' face, and it is frankly disturbing. 'It wasn't all Carol's fault, though,' he explains, ever the gent, rolling his eyes back down from their sockets.

'Her partner chose a very raunchy rumba, for starters. Then there was this BBC obsession - which I hate, by the way - with facial expressions. They are always telling the poor sods that they have to show emotion through their faces, which is daft because you end up with cheesy grins and 'oooh-ooohs'.

Len Goodman with Strictly Come Dancing host Claudia Winkleman

Len Goodman with Strictly Come Dancing host Claudia Winkleman

The upshot for Carol was that she ended up pulling all these moody faces, like she was having a multiple orgasm all the time. Excuse me, but you know the face I mean.' Well, I do now, Len.

A few years ago, the only way you'd have heard of Len Goodman, surely Strictly's biggest star, was if you were a ballroom dancing nut, or you lived in Dartford and had ever been through a stage where tutus are to-die-for.

Carol Vorderman shows off THAT face with dancing partner Paul Killick

Carol Vorderman shows off THAT face with dancing partner Paul Killick

Goodman Dance Centre has been going strong in the Kent town for 40 years, with everyone's kid 'coming up Goodmans', as he puts it, to learn to dance.

Len still pops in from time to time, usually to a hero's welcome from the students, whether they be toddlers or grannies. 'Behind the record player I have paddles, and I'll stick up a seven for them. They love all that.'

Len might well have been happy with his lot - ex-competitive ballroom dancer turned small town dance teacher - had Strictly not come calling.

Now he is a bona fide celeb himself - up there with poor Carol in being ripe for public humiliation. He knows so because he opened his Sunday newspaper recently to find that he had been photographed taking the bins out in his dressing gown.

'That was the point where I thought, "the world's gone stark raving bonkers," ' he admits. 'It was one of my bloody neighbours who earned himself a few bob tipping them off. If I'd known, I'd have said to him: "Next time, let me in on it, and I'll do it naked. We can split the cash."'

He tells me today that although he is now irrefutably head honcho on the show's jury, he was actually the last judge cast in the role - and was mightily peeved at that.

A few years back, word had gone round the ballroom dancing world that the BBC was looking for a panel of experts for an updated version of Come Dancing, and 'everyone' had been asked to audition - save for Len.

'I was quite miffed, to be perfectly honest. I'm not blowing my own trumpet, but I had been knocking around for a few years and was well known on the judging circuit. I kept thinking, "what's wrong with me?" '

In the event, they did call - 'I think they had run out of people to ask,' he quips - and he did get the job.

He filmed the pilot show for Strictly on his 60th birthday - a bit late to start appearing in Heat magazine, he concedes - but things promptly started 'to go pretty nuts'.

Strictly was a ratings sensation. Celebs fell over themselves, literally, to take part. Len, the resident smoothie, was feted. The producers of Dancing With The Stars - the U.S. version of Strictly - wooed him, which meant a transatlantic commute between the two shows, a la Simon Cowell.

In light entertainment terms, this is about as big as it gets. Every time he gets a pay cheque, he tells me, 'it feels like winning the lottery'.

We meet at a chic West London hotel where he is fresh from L.A. - exquisitely pressed and matching the mahogany furniture. He rarely gives interviews, but he's just completed his irresistibly engaging autobiography, which is serialised from Monday in the Mail. He admits to a near panic attack when he discovered that fellow Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood was also penning his life story.

Mr Nasty! Craig Revel Horwood

Mr Nasty! Craig Revel Horwood

'He was a rent boy, you know,' Len tells me, eyebrows doing a little dance of their own. 'And a transvestite. The stories he has told me would make your hair curl. When I heard he was doing a book and was going to tell all, I thought, "oh blimey". I was straight onto my publishers saying: "If you are expecting shock horror to compete with that you've got the wrong bloke in me."'

Funnily enough, he and Craig did battle over what to call their respective books. 'We were in a cab somewhere swopping ideas. I was saying things like "what about Cheek To Cheek", when the driver piped up, "I have got a good name for your book - All Balls And Glitter". So we both said, "yes, yes - brilliant," but we had to toss a coin for it. Craig won.'

And rightly so. Lovely though he is, Len doesn't do 'glitter'. Nothing about him suggests 'ballroom dancer'. He is taller than you might imagine, and well built with it. He also sounds more Vinnie Jones than Fred Astaire. I point this out and he positively beams.

'There used to be a show called What's My Line? where you had to guess what someone did for a living. I always wanted to go on because no one would ever have got me as a ballroom dancer. I think they'd have probably said I was more of a welder or a plumber. I always liked that.'

So, presumably, did the ladies. Can there be a more attractive ideal than a man who can whisk you off your feet, and also look as if he can plaster a ceiling? His eyes twinkle.

'Let me tell you a secret. I'm rubbish at DIY. Can't do a thing. But ballroom dancing is the most marvellous business to be in because all the girls are beautiful and all the blokes are gay!'

Except him, clearly. We get to talking about showbiz success landing on him so late in life, and I ask if he ever wishes that it had all happened for him sooner?

'Oh no,' he says, roaring with laughter. 'If it had happened to me in my 20s and 30s I would have been terrible at handling it. I would have run off with Abi Titmuss or someone. It would have gone horribly wrong.'

Len Goody Goodman: 'I try to say something nice first'

Len Goody Goodman: 'I try to say something nice first'

Perhaps, then, this late blossoming is a blessing, given that even in relative obscurity he has struggled to control the ladies in his life. He may insist that his personal life is woefully lacking in scandal, compared to Craig's, but has had his own complicated dalliances with the fairer sex.

His first wife, Cherry was his childhood sweetheart, and - fatally - also his dancing partner.

It seems that Len didn't see much further than the elegant swish of her skirt.

'We did that classic dancer thing of getting involved with our dancing partners. Dancing brings you together, but you forget that you have to spend the rest of your lives together, too. Once you pack up dancing, you look across at her and think, "what am I doing with you?" and she thinks, "what am I doing with this silly sod". That's pretty much what happened with us.'

All glitter: Matt Di Angelo and partner Flavia Cacace, left, and Alesha Dixon with Matt Cutler compete on the hit show

It ended very badly, with her running off with a Frenchman and him being told by his best friend. His reaction was to throw all her clothes onto the lawn of their home.

'It was hurt pride, pure and simple. If she'd told me, "look Len, I love somebody else", I would have handled it. I'd have still been annoyed, yes, but I would have got over it. You can't choose who you love in life.'

His second big relationship, to Lesley, came a cropper, too, but only after the birth of their son, James, in 1981. They never married although, curiously, Lesley did change her name to Goodman by deed poll. Why?

'I just didn't want to upset anyone. In those days, it wasn't the thing to have a child out of wedlock but, to be honest, neither of us wanted to get married.'

By this stage Len had moved into dance teaching and judging, travelling all over the country, sometimes the world, and pretty often forgetting that he had commitments back home. He confesses that his staying power in relationships was 'pretty awful'.

'The trouble with me is I fall in love very easily,' he says. 'And I suppose the flip side of that is that I fall out of love just as easily.'

There followed a turbulent time, with money worries and career frustrations. Through the Eighties, the dance school made him a living, but it was never lucrative. At one stage he ended up living in a poky flat above the dance studio, wondering where it had all gone wrong.

And then - not overnight, but it seems like it now - life started to sparkle again. When he was in his mid-50s he started a relationship with Sue, the woman who helped him run his dance school.

They hooked up just before Strictly went stratospheric, which he says has kept his feet on the ground, and his heart away from the Abi Titmusses of this world.

'I'd known Sue for years, but we were out at a function one night and I got chatting to her, and realised that I'd never really known her before. And she has a great smile. I'm a sucker for a nice smile.'

She doesn't tend to travel with him, though. When he heads to the States for filming, he tends to travel with fellow judge Bruno Tonioli, and the pair even stay in the same apartment block. Len manages to make them sound like Darby and Joan.

Darby and Joan: Len Goodman, right, in Dancing With The Stars and with fellow judge Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba

Darby and Joan: Len Goodman, right, in Dancing With The Stars and with fellow judge Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba

'I go round to Brunos because he can cook. In return, I do his ironing.'

Ironing? One of our most successful entertainment exports is doing the ironing of another?

'Oh yes, but not his underpants. I draw the line there.'

It gets funnier. I ask what Bruno cooks for these soirees a deux, and Len looks suddenly blank.

'You know, he chops up all bits of stuff and sticks it in. Actually, I really don't know what he does. He will get some chicken and make it into this thing, but he doesn't like vegetables. He only likes salads so he only has salad, but he won't have the two together. It's strange, isn't it? Folk are strange.'

Len, it's safe to assume, is more of a meat-and-two-veg man then?

'Oh yes,' he brightens. 'I like everything my nan used to cook. Stews and roast dinners and sausage and mash and jam roly poly, spotted dick, all that. I don't like that couscous - so good they named it twice.'

Gosh. Little wonder we love him. You know where you are with a man like Len Goodman.

As head honcho of the Strictly jury - the show returns to our screens next month - he is the one who makes the final call if there is a tie on the show. He is also the one least likely to make the contestants cry.

'Craig calls me Lenny Goody Goodman because I try to say something nice first on the programme, but I couldn't do it any other way.

'I don't like being nasty just for the sake of it. OK, some of the contestants are rubbish, but I always say something like, "you have very nice posture but unfortunately your hip work needs action", rather than "Oh God, what a lump".' Still, it's hard work being nice to people. He nods.

'I have a little book where I write down things as they come to me. I have a section for nice things, and a section for horrible things. The horrible bit is much longer.

The worst he can say about the last Strictly judge, Arlene Phillips - the show's resident sour-puss - is that she keeps herself to herself and is 'a bit tight'.

'She paid for a drink once and it was so unexpected that the rest of us gave her a round of applause.'

He is even nice about that legendary Strictly hoofer, Fiona Phillips. When he tells me that he could teach anyone to dance, there is only the slightest hesitation when I say: 'What, even Fiona?'

'Er, well, yes, given enough time. If she came to my normal classes with her husband and started off doing the most basic steps, then slowly, she would become a dancer. The trouble with the show is that you have to see results very fast, which is why people like Fiona get into trouble.'

Perhaps surprisingly, he isn't remotely precious about the ballroom dancing business, laughing to himself at all the implausible frocks and fake tans.

'It is daft, isn't it. Of course a lot of it is fake, but the heart of it isn't fake at all. That's why I love it. Even now, watching people, whether it is beginners at my dance school or celebs, get into it, gives me the greatest joy. They lose themselves in it, you see. Even people who don't expect to, they get gripped.

'That's what I love most about the success of Strictly. All this stuff that I knew about ballroom dancing anyway, well, the whole world knows it now.'

'Simon Cowell!' he says, quickasyou-like, when I ask who he would kill to have on board. 'I'd love to get him doing the Cha Cha Cha. Wouldn't that be fun. And Stephen Fry - I think he is marvellous. Do you think he can move? The lovely thing about dance is you never can tell, until you see them take the first few steps. Then you know.'

He hasn't danced professionally since 1973 and, curiously, shrieks, 'oh no, never', when I ask him if he is first onto the dancefloor when a wedding band strikes up.

'I stopped dancing pretty much completely a while back when I caught sight myself in the mirror dancing with a pupil. You still think you are 26, in your head, don't you? But I saw myself that day and thought "Len, time to bow out".

'Now Strictly has blown it for me doing social stuff, too. At a wedding or function, if I get up there and start gliding about a bit, everyone else goes, "Oh, look at him - show off". Or else they say, "huh! He calls himself an expert, but he's not that great". So mostly I stay put.'

He's not the sort to be happy in the corner, though, I tease. Those eyes twinkle again. 'I might get up for a slow smoochy number, though, if pushed.' I bet he might.